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A few months ago, I posted a few programs that I was using for writing. Some were free, others were not.

I have a few (ok, a whole shelf and then some) of books on writing, both paper and ebook. When I grabbed Fiction Writing for Dummies on Amazon to get the half off deal for Randy’s Snowflake Pro, I was planning on doing some serious writing.

About a year later, I barely even read the book. Same with using the program. It is a great book and program.

I am just seriously fearful of putting all that work into writing with a near 99.999999% certainty that it will not be accepted by any publisher.

Alrighty, back to programs and tools.

A few years back, I was led to Freemind. A java mindmap program that is also freeware! I grabbed it and started playing around with it. Then promptly forgot about it.

I updated my desktop this year from XP to Win7 64 bit so I could have more memory, 8 GB of ram, to play with. I started checking things out and discovered that the Java programs I had, did not like the 64 bitness. They were made for 32 bit computers. It took me a few months of not really doing anything until I got a clue to check out if a computer can have two versions of java. One in 64 bit and the other 32 bit.

I was in luck. It can indeed.

I installed Snowflake Pro and Freemind, which had a recent update too. They both worked wonderfully. Then they sat there, mostly unused for weeks at time.

Recently, I started looking at Dar Writes blog and came across a listing of writer resources. Always looking for new things, I checked it out. I found many to be of interest but one really caught my eye.

It was the Writer’s Weekly. Running through it, I came across an ad for writing fast. Intrigued, I checked it out. It was a ebook describing a writing process. I read the excerpt and liked what I saw and grabbed the book and promptly put it on my Nook. I spent the evening and next few days reading and rereading it.

This brings me back to the Writing fiction for Dummies book. In one of the chapters mentioned finding my writing paradigm. What writing process that works for me. I have a friend that tells me to just write. I get a few pages done sometimes, but it is agonizingly slow and I go for months not working on it. I figured that I am not someone who can just write it down from the get go. I attempted it last year with Nanowrimo. I failed miserably.

Failing is a fail only if I don’t learn something from it. I just didn’t realize it yet.

When I reinstalled Freemind, it automatically opened my most recent mindmap, which happened to be a book I have been working off and on for the past lifetime. I noticed that I had a detailed outline on one side and tons of backstory on the other side. I remembered what I read about writing paradigms and other stuff. I seem to be more of a outliner type of writer. Freemind seems to work better for me than Snowflake pro. For the time being. Things change it seems.

Also noted that I didn’t plan this blog. I just wrote it as it came. Go figure. I am thinking my mindset of writing plays a big deal. This tells me that I should be able to write as I go if I just don’t take it too seriously at the moment.